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Copyright by 
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1870. 




TO 



ALL AMERICANS. 




HOME OF REV. DR. S. P. SMITH. 



REV. DR. S. F. SMITH. 




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THE FAVOKtTR CORNER. 



"~^ AMUEL 
w3 Francis 

Smith, tlie autlior 
of our National 
Hymn " America," 
was born at the 
North End, Boston, 
under the sound of 
old Christ Church 
chimes, October 2 i, 
1808. He attended 
the Latin School, from which, in 1825, (having been 
a medal scholar) he entered Harvard College, in the 
same class with Oliver Wendell Holmes, the late 
Judges B. R.Curtis and G. T. Bigelow, James Free- 
man Clarke, and Chandler Robbins. Josiah Quincy 
became President of the College in their last 
year. George Ticknor was one of their teachers, 
and Charles Sumner (1830), John Lothrop Motley 
and Wendell Phillips (183 1) were in the classes 
next below them. Mr. Smith passed from Cam- 
bridge to the Andover Theological Seminary, in 
the beautiful town of that name. This was an out- 
growth of the famous Phillips Academy, at whose 
centenary, last summer. Dr. Holmes delivered the 
poem, and about which he and others have, of late 



years, told such interesting stories. Professor Stuart 
and his early colleagues in the Seminary were then at 
the height of their usefulness and fame. In the class 
above Mr. Smith was the since renowned theologian, 
Professor Park ; in the class that entered next, the 
late Professor Hackett. 

Upon graduating, in 1832, Mr. Smith engaged for 
a year in editorial labor. He was ordained to the 
ministry in February, 1834, and went to Waterville, 
Me., preaching as pastor in the Baptist church, and 
becoming Professor of Modern Languages in the 
college there. After eight years thus spent, he moved 
to the village of Newton Centre, Mass., which has 
ever since been his home. For seven years he was 
editor of the "Christian Review," and for twelve years 
and a half, until July, 1854, he was a pastor there. 

During his subsequent residence he has been occu- 
pied in general literary pursuits, and in editorial labor, 
largely in the service of Christian Missions, to which 
he has also seen a useful and honored son devote 
himself in India. 

Mr. Edwin P. Whipple has observed that : "Some 
of the most popular and most quoted poems in our 
literature are purely accidental hits, and their authors 
are rather nettled than pleased that their other pro- 
ductions should be neglected while such prominence 



REV. DR. S. F. SMITH. 



is given to one " — instancing T. W. Parsons, and his 
" Lines on a Bust of Dante." It was once intimated 
to me by a member of Dr. Smith's famil)', not that the 
author of "America" desired prominence for other 
strokes of his pen, but that he was sometimes a little 
weary with that accorded to the one which is so often 
and so heartily sung. But Dr. Smith has probably 
settled down to his fate, with which, indeed, it would 
be particularly vain to strive, since the frequent occa- 
sions of using the national hymn furnished by the 
war have been so quickly followed by those of patri- 
otic centenary observances. Very appropriately, too, 
the effort to save the Old South has enlisted our 
poets, drawing attention to the history of some of their 



early famous poems, and thus seated these all the 
more firmly in popular interest. 

Long will be remembered, by all who were so fortu- 
nate as to attend it, the entertainment given in those 
old walls on the evening of May 4th, 1877. Gover- 
nor Rice presided, and Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Ralph 
Waldo Emerson, and Drs. J. F. Clarke, S. F. Smith, 
and O. VV. Holmes, the three college classmates, read 
and spoke on the occasion. 

Dr. Smith told the story of "America." The late 
Mr. William C. Woodbridge, he said, brought from 
Germany many years ago a number of books used in 
schools there, containing words and music, and com- 
mitted them to the late Dr. Lowell Mason, who placed 




DR. SMITH*S STUDY. 



them in Dr. Smith's hands, asking him to translate 
anything he might find worthy, or, if he preferred, to 
furnish original words to such of the music as might 
please him. It was among this collection that, on a 
gloomy February day in 1832, the student at Ando- 
ver found its present music for the song he had there 
composed in that year. It may here be observed that 
much discussion has occurred in England, within a 
year, as to the origin of this air, which, in 1815, it is 
said, served for the national anthem in England, in 
Prussia and in Russia, it being superseded in the 
latter country only about a generation ago. " Like 
the English constitution," remarked the Daily News, 
" it has gone through a series of developments, and 



such a history is not unbecoming in the case of a truly 
national air." It has sometimes been claimed that 
Handel composed and introduced it into England, 
but the researches of Chappell, and of the Germans, 
Fink and Chrysander, Handel's biographer, agree in 
ascribing the original strain to the Englishman, Henry 

Carey (169 1743), who has another title to fame 

in the authorsiiip of " Sally in our Alley." 

Before Dr. Smith fulfilled his part on the pro- 
gramme at the Old South entertainment, by reciting 
"America," he said that on returning from a year's 
wandering in Europe, some time since, he was asked 
if any country had supplanted his own in his regard. 
To this inquiry he read to the audience a poetical 



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REV. DR. S. F. SMITH. 



reply entitled "My Native Land." It contains six 
stanzas, of which the followhig are the first and third : 

We wander far o'er land and sea, 

We seek the old and new, 
We try the lowly and the great, 

The many and the few ; . 
O'er states at hand and realms remote, 

With curious quest we roam, 
But find the fairest spot on earth 

Just in our native home. 

We seek for landscapes fair and grand, 

Seen through sweet summer haze, 
Helvetia's mountains, piled with snow, 

Italia's sunset rays, 
And lake, and stream, and crag, and dell, 

And new and fairer flowers — 
We own them rich and fair — but not 

More grand, more fair than ours. 

These stanzas have been given as a natural preface 
to a slight sketch of Dr. 
Smith's surroundings in the 
town where he dwells ; for 
though he speaks in them 
of the beauties of his whole 
country, yet it may well 
be believed that the land- 
scape charms of Newton 
Centre, as well as nearly 
forty years of residence 
there, conspire to make it 
for him the dearest spot of 
the land. 

The landscape tempts us 
out of doors, but first we 
will glance about the poet's 
home. Leaving the parlor 
we cross the hall and pass 
into a drawing room, in 
rear of which is a side-en- 
trance passage, beyond 
which is another pleasant 
apartment. In the rear of the room first entered, con- 
taining various souvenirs of European travel, and one 
book-case, is the library proper, which has its walls, 
where the books allow them to be seen at all, covered 
with a warm scarlet paper. The heat diffused over 
the house by a furnace can at any time, for comfort or 
delight, be re-inforced by the open fires which poets 
especially love for their reveries. Whoever is wel- 
comed to the dining-room of this hospitable home will 
find good cheer and quaint china. The mention of 
the last recalls to me that in the parlor is a relic of 
that possessed by Charles Sumner, and given to Dr. 
Smith by his friend the Hon. William Claflin. When 
Dr. Smith alluded, in his modest way, to the atten- 
tions paid him in his visit to Washington in October, 




1877, about which I had read in the papers, I could 
only think, "Who, if not he, should be an honored 
gueijl in the capital of the nation ?" 

Certainly there is no other man among us whose 
words are so often read and sung, east and west, north 
and south — thrilling all the instincts of patriotism. 
The study is full of interesting objects. The 
large picture suspended above the open grate is 
a very old and beautiful painting of the Holy Family 
by one of the old masters — probably a Murillo — in 
excellent preservation. The stone lion on the right 
side of the grate is a carving, a foot and a half in 
height, brought from the steps of an idol temple in 
Buriiiah, where he stood guard in former years. On 
the opposite side is a reclining Buddh, of polished 
marble, rare and very beautiful, from the same coun- 
try. On the top of the bookcase on the opposite side 
of the library is a small but very fine bust of Milton ; 

on the right, a massive 
elephant's tooth, and on 
the left, the skull of a 
man-eating tiger, which in 
his life-time was known to 
have feasted on the flesh of 
several victims. On one 
of the two bookcases on 
the intermediate side of 
the library is a sitting 
Buddh, carved in white 
marble. The tall, old- 
fashioned clock in one of 
the corners has been an 
heir-loom in the family a 
hundred and fifteen years. 
The most-used chair in the 
room was the property, 
more than a hundred 
years ago, of a clergyman 
of the northern part of 
Middlesex county. The 
straw chair with projecting arms did service several 
years in the town of Rangoon in Burmah. A very 
beautiful slipper, of Dresden china, does duty as a 
pen-holder on the centre-table. Engravings cover 
most of the walls not hidden by the bookcases ; the 
most interesting being Pere Hyacinthe and Heng- 
stenberg, the commentator on the Psalms. 

This dwelling " hath a pleasant seat." It faces the 
east, is moderately retired from the street, and is upon 
an elevation gently rising for some distance, up which 
sweeps, in a graceful curve, the public road. Follow- 
ing this in its descent, and then almost to the top of 
a lesser acclivity, one comes to a rural church ideally 
situated, and forming, amid its trees, an attractive 
sight across the pretty vale from the northern side of 



REV. DR. S. F, SMITH. 



REV. DR. S. F.SMITH. 



Dr. Smith's home. This view is English in its quiet 
grace and natural beauty. 

Returning now by tlie road, and going on past the 
house again, a spacious village green is passed, and 
you come to another church, the one over which Dr. 
Smith was many years settled, fit in position to glad- 
den an American George Herbert. It is embowered 
in a corner where roads cross on the broad plain 
from which rises, on the left of the main road we have 
trodden, a long and high hill. This is crowned by 
the buildings of the Newton Theological Institution 
of which the Rev. Dr. Hovey is President. One who 
toils up the winding tree-lined avenue will be reward- 
ed by reaching an eminence which will bear compari- 
son with that where was once the old Ursuline Con- 
vent of Charlestown, or with Andover's plateau and 
elegant shades, or the delightful crests of Amherst. 
On the west, the view is particularly fine. Dr. Hackett 
used to compare it to that from the Acropolis of 
Athens. On the horizon rise IMonadnock and Wachu- 
sett, with many a town and village between. At 
your foot are the churches and a beautiful little sheet 
of water, which, with the mount on which we are 
standing, gives the situation some claim to be regard- 
ed as an American miniature "L.ake District." Sail- 
ing or rowing out upon it, and looking up the height, 
the scene is German or Italian in its bold and roman- 
tic character. The hues in the stone of the chapel, 
and its architecture, embracing a heavy tower, give it, 
set upon the wooded hill, an air of age, and recall 
the castle sites on Como, or one of those still inhabit- 
ed religious establishments which rise upon the banks 
of the Danube. 

Not very far from the water is the former home of 
Dr. Hackett, and following west the road upon which 
it lies, towards Brooklawn, the country-seat of Gov. 
Claflin, the traveller first comes to the portal of the 
cemetery in which the scholar now reposes. Dr. 
Smith has chosen a final resting place here among 
the urns of this and other friends. Sure we are that 
none could wish for them, or for himself, a fairer spot 
to rest one's head upon the lap of earth. It is a good 
place for the dawn of the immortal morning on him 



who wrote, years ago, " The morning light is break- 
ing." 

There is little, in meeting Dr. Smith, to remind one 
of such thoughts ; but, in four years more, the famous 
Harvard class of " Twenty-nine " will have sung the 
words, " My Country, 'tis of thee," a half-century, 
and Dr. Holmes is beginning to speak of his own 
failing voice. Gently may he and his classmates fail 
and fade from their activities, distant yet be the day 
when those who knew him of whom this paper has 
spoken, shall stand and muse : — 

Here lies who hymned America; to shig or preach, 
Dante's suggestive words our question's tribute teach, 
Where was " a better smith of tlie maternal speech ? " 

Since the main part of this was written. Dr. Smith's 
home has lost one who, for nearly forty years, was its 
honored and beloved inmate. Mrs. Ann VV. Smith, 

the mother of 
his wife, died 
"August 20th, 
1878. Born 
July 28, 1786, 
a sister of the 
eminent judge, 
the late Hon. 
Daniel Apple- 
ton White, and 
married almost 
seventy years 
since, this venerable lady carried one's thoughts back 
to the early days of the elder Quincy and Webster, 
Dana and Bryant, and Madame Patterson Bonaparte. 
At ninety-two, however, her interest in life was keen, 
and her beauty of spirit, fitly enshrined in a noble 
figure, looked forth from a face round, full and fair. 
The writer will ever remember the honor and pleasure 
of handing Madame Smith to breakfast, in her son- 
in-law's home, two inonths previous to her death, just 
before the family left Newton for their cottage by the 
sea. It was there, where she was accustomed to 
bathe with much zest, that, a few weeks later, she had 
a fall which soon proved fatal to the body, and freed 
the soul, of the aged Christian. 

G. H. Whittemore. 




OUTSIDE THE STUDY WINDOW. 




■"CkV/ 




My country, 'tis of thee, 
Sweet land of liberty, 
Of thee I sing ; 
Land where my fathers died, 

Land of the pilgrims' pride, 

From every mountain side 
Let freedom ring. 




LAND WHEHE MY FATHEKS DIED, 
LAND OF THE PILGRIMS' PKIDE. 




My native country ! 
thee, 

Land of the noble, '' 

free, 

Thy name I love ; 
I love thy rocks and rills, 



Thy woods and templed hills ; 



My heart with rapture thrills, 
Like that above. 




I LOVE THT ROCKS AND RILLS, 
THY WOODS AND TEMPLED UlLLS. 




Let music swell 
the breeze, 



And rinsf from all 

O 



the trees 
Sweet freedom's sons: : 
Let mortal tongues awake, 

Let all that breathe partake, '/ At^ 

Let rocks their silence break, 
The sound prolong. 




LET BOCKS THELK SILENCE BRKAK. 



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Our fathers' God, to thee, 
Author of liberty. 

To thee we sing : 
Long may our land be bright 

With freedom's holy light ; 

Protect us by thy might. 
Great God, our King. 




LOKG MAY OCR LAND BE BRIGHT 
WITH freedom's HOI.V LIGHT. 



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